The craft · Black Irish Designs — Montana

Study. Understand. Make.

Custom furniture, built-ins, metalwork, and a piano-grade finish — every surface studied before it is touched. One craftsman, start to finish.

See the work →

The finish is the proof

A finish you can read the sky in.

Every surface of the walnut live-edge slab was touched by forty-five separate passes — fifteen grits, three passes each, the finish laid down at 1200 — leaving a clarity and detail that belongs on a bespoke shotgun stock. The chest of drawers took seventy-two passes over every surface: twenty-four stages, sanded to 8,000 and polished with three automotive compounds to 15,000, in pursuit of the mirror-black depth of a concert grand — until the top returned the sky, the roofline, and a set of Festool sanders cleanly enough that Festool reposted it on their own feed. All of it by abrasion and polish alone. No filler, ever.

45passes over the walnut

72passes over the chest

15,000final polishing grit

Finish featured on Festool's Instagram

The chest of drawers' lacquer-clear top reflecting the sky and a roofline — // Sky & roofline, mirrored in the chest's top

Festool sanders reflected in the mirror-finished surface — the image Festool reposted — // Festool's own sanders, mirrored — the reposted frame

The walnut live-edge slab — heartwood and sapwood grain, raw — // The walnut slab — the grain beneath all forty-five passes

The walnut slab on the bench mid-finishing, sanding discs behind — // Mid-schedule on the bench — the discs that did it

A mitered walnut table top awaiting its glass inset, mirror-deep finish — // Another walnut build, same schedule — a glass-inset table top, mirror-deep

The work

A few things, made completely.

The ipe project

Spiral stair, louvers, and deck — my ipe woodwork and steel finishing. Design and fabrication by others.

Fir live-edge dining table on a sculptural cross base, in place

Fir live-edge table

Blond fir, live edges kept both sides, over a hand-built cross base — the pale grain doing the talking.

African-mahogany chest

Mahogany drawer faces, 1/8″ reveals, a piano-grade top.

Wine-barrel Adirondack

Nothing but the barrel's own staves — the curvature does the shaping, wine stain intact.

Reclaimed floor-joist countertop in an architect's office

Reclaimed-joist counter

A 130-year-old floor joist, re-made as an architect's-office counter.

Commission the thing the room is missing.

A table, a built-in, a stair, a piece of furniture made for the space — designed and built in one shop, by one craftsman. Tell me what you have in mind.

hello@blackirish.design